Music and Lyrics

Drew Barrymore & Hugh Grant

By Natasha Stoynoff

UPDATED 02/19/2007 at 01:00 AM EST • Originally published 02/19/2007 at 01:00 AM EST

In Music and Lyrics, Hugh Grant bops around like a Wham! reject as a washed-up '80s pop star who woos a ditsy poet played by Drew Barrymore, 31. Can a sarcastic Brit and a sunny California girl click in real life? PEOPLE's Natasha Stoynoff found out that the duo are so close they've got pet names: America, meet Hubert and Druella!

Hugh, this movie proves you can shake your booty.

HUGH: We had a brilliant choreographer who does Britney and Christina. And then, poor bastard, he gets this 46-year-old very grumpy, very terrified Englishman. He turned the music up and said, 'Just express yourself.' And, of course, I have no self to express! Then suddenly, one day, I thought, Yes! Today I'm very sexy!

DREW: He was just like Tom Jones!

HUGH: Perhaps a little too much like Tom Jones. I looked more like a male stripper than Simon Le Bon.

What's your favorite '80s pop tune?

DREW: "Eye of the Tiger"—that's a cheesy song that gets your engines going. I was on a diet once, and a friend would play it every time I was about to pig out.

HUGH: I have a soft spot for Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go, Girl"—

DREW:—it's go-GO, Hubert!

HUGH: Oh. Is that how it is? I know nothing about music. I sing Gilbert and Sullivan in the shower. Or, more specifically, in the lavatory.

Do romantic comedy stars believe in happy endings?

HUGH: I think it's bollocks. It's a nonsense I perpetrate purely for financial gain.

DREW: I do, I do! He's a cynic; I'm a romantic.

Hello, Yin and Yang!

DREW: On set, Hubert's trailer was like a cold, dark cell with an angry middle-aged—as he calls himself—Englishman alone with nothing but a few salads.

HUGH: Hers was filled with sunshine, laughter, people, dogs ... and masses of drugs.

Drew: Shut up! I didn't have drugs in my trailer, Hubert!

But seriously, how do you mend a broken heart?

DREW: I talk to myself in the mirror, pretending the other person is there and have conversations with them.

HUGH: I do that—but I end up spitting at myself.

DREW: Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Every minute you are angry is 60 seconds of happiness that you lose."

HUGH: That sounds unbearably trite. But then, he was a crashing bore.

DREW: Oh, Hubert!